How Do I Know if I Have An Addiction?

If you find yourself wondering if you might have addiction, the following list might be a good starting point for you. The list will help you to evaluate the harmful costs of the activity or substance use that concerns you. In addition to your own evaluation, try to imagine how others might rate your behavior on this list. You do not need to develop a precisely correct list of the costs of your addiction. However, it is important to recognize whether these costs are beginning to cause substantial harm. If so, then perhaps it is time to do something about the behavior that concerns you. In another chapter we will talk about various approaches to self-help and treatment for addiction.

Emotional costs of addiction: living with daily feelings of fear, anger, sadness, shame, guilt, paranoia, loss of pleasure, boredom, emotional instability, self-loathing (disgust with oneself), loneliness, isolation, and feelings worthlessness. The frequency and magnitude of these negative feelings could contribute to the development of an additional mental health disorder. Addictions regularly co-occur with other psychiatric disorders).

Social costs of addiction: disruption or damage to important relationships; decreased ability or interest in forming meaningful connections with others; and limiting one's social sphere to other unhealthy, addicted persons.

Work and productivity costs of addiction: decreased productivity in all aspects of life; missing important deadlines and failing to meet obligations; impaired ability to safely operate tools and equipment (including driving); and lost time due to accidents arising from being impaired (e.g., falling and breaking a leg).

Legal costs of addiction: direct legal costs due to involvement with an illegal drug or activity (e.g. selling drugs, child pornography); indirect legal costs because of what someone did while engaging in their addiction (DUI, bar fights, domestic violence, divorce); or did not do (failing to care for children properly).

Lost time due to addiction: sacrificing time spent in meaningful, life enriching activities in order to engage in addictive behaviors. Meaningful, life-enriching activities are of two basic types: 1) Love: time spent in relationships with others, and 2) Work: time spent being productive including employment, learning, working on personal projects, volunteering, and helping others. Time is a limited resource. When time is increasingly spent pursuing an addiction, it limits the amount of time available to devote to these two basic human activities.

Diminished personal integrity due to addiction: Most people have a strong sense of morality. This includes a sense of what is right and wrong; what one ought to do (and not do); how others should be treated; and a sense of responsibility toward one's family, community, employer, and to society as a whole. However a tiny percentage of people (roughly 1%) seem to be missing this sense of morality. Such people are often termed sociopathic, psychopathic, or antisocially disordered. Although the terms are not identical, they are similar enough for our purposes. This sociopathic 1% of the population will commonly develop addictions. Unfortunately, if someone in the other 99% of the population develops an addiction they will begin to behave in a manner similar to sociopaths as their addiction progresses. In other words, they begin to lose their morality and integrity.

As addicted people gradually lose their moral compass, they begin to disrespect the rights and needs other people. They even mistreat the people that matter to them most. This begins by failing to meet certain responsibilities, commitments, or obligations. Examples of these failures might be: failing to show up for things; becoming dishonest by failing to disclose information; or making excuses rather than making a sincere apology. This type of disregard will evolve into more obvious forms of disrespect and mistreatment as addiction progresses. This progression might include flat-out lying and deception; stealing from loved ones; and threatening these same people if their demands are not met. Unlike their sociopathic counterparts who lack a moral compass to begin with, people who once had a moral compass experience tremendous feelings of guilt and self-loathing as they break their own moral code. Addiction can only relieve these feelings temporarily.

A life that is absent of meaning and purpose due to addiction: This cost is perhaps the ultimate one. For some, this loss takes the form of experiencing a separation and estrangement from God. It might be a feeling that one has disappointed God by not fulfilling God's higher purpose. For others, it means losing the meaning and purpose of life. This meaning and purpose is ordinarily derived from our loving involvement with other people and a sense of purpose that occurs from our productive activities (work, learning, achievement, contribution to others, etc.) In either case, addicted persons have traded away these essential ingredients to life satisfaction for the sake of pursuing momentary pleasures. This is followed by the frantic effort for even more momentary pleasures.

The harmful costs of addiction to society

So far we've reviewed the substantial, harmful costs of addiction to individuals. Another way to consider these costs is to consider the cost of addiction to an entire society. The financial cost of addiction to the citizens of the United States is staggering. We can do no better than to quote the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), from their website: http://www.drugabuse.gov/infofacts/understand.html

"Drug abuse and addiction have negative consequences for individuals and for society. Estimates of the total overall costs of substance abuse in the United States, including productivity and health- and crime-related costs, exceed $600 billion annually (emphasis added). This includes approximately $181 billion for illicit drugs, $193 billion for tobacco, and $235 billion for alcohol. As staggering as these numbers are, they do not fully describe the breadth of destructive public health and safety implications of drug abuse and addiction, such as family disintegration, loss of employment, failure in school, domestic violence, and child abuse."